Left for Halong Bay (Descending Dragon Bay) early Monday morning, the road was very bumpy and a tad dangerous since marked lines are ignored and trucks like to overtake on the wrong side of the road. We saw a semi trailer on it's side with the front axle half hanging off. Arrive around midday and had lunch on the three level junk boat whilst cruising around. Mixed group with Danes, Spaniards, an American (terrible Californian accent), Frenchies, Swiss' and Viet-Americans.
Spoke to two French blokes at lunch, these guys have a beer and share a bottle of wine lunch and dinner everyday. The look on one of their faces when we told them we only drink on the weekend and have soft drinks with dinner was priceless. The weather was quite gloomy.
Went through the limestone caves (called Surprising Caves), it was quite cool in there. After we went kayaking for an hour, not easy considering Kay had not done it before and it was my third time. It was far too cold to swim. Dinner was a mix of seafood, chicken and beef. The grilled fish was very nice, i thought it was chicken until i bit into it. Spent the night on the boat, the bed was so hard it felt like i was sleeping on the floor.
Breakfast was at 7:40am, those who were staying an extra night alighted, leaving six of us left to return to Hanoi. Much warmer day, unfortunate that we couldn't swim. Arrived back at our Hanoi hotel where we left our bags around 4pm, we went for a walk and had Thai for dinner (it's better in Oz). We saw this bakery which had a huge line and only sold something called a rotimexico - a bun with chocolate on the inside and a coffee sort of bread on top. We hung around the hotel until it was time to leave for the station. The overnight train to Sapa left at 9pm.
Out of pure luck we shared our cabin with not only two 21 year old Aussies from Sydney but the bloke came form Drummoyne and the girl from Ashfield. On top of that we had mutual friends. They were spending six weeks going through Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. The ride was terrible, nothing like a cityrail train. I can describe it as trying to sleep in Jeremy's car whilst driving on a bumpy road. I also happened to be the exact length of the bed in width and length, probably had five hours sleep. We arrived in Lao Cai at 5:30am, then got on an hour and a half bus ride to Sapa. Lao Cai was bearable in my shorts and t-shirt, Sapa was not. It was sooooooooooo cold. I didn't think it was this bad so i didn't pack anything warm.
When we left for our 6km trek at 9am i had a singlet, t-shirt and long sleeve rugby jumper on, it was bearable. Although once we started walking/hiking it was fine, in fact i had to take a t-shirt off from underneath after 45mins. As soon as we left the hotel i was swooped upon by three ethnic Zao women who shadowed me for half an hour, asking questions and finally talking me into buying things. Our group of seven were outnumbered by these women.
We saw how they live (i had to bow my head in the house), they would all be around Kay's height (150cm).
The landscape was beautiful, the clouds were sitting on top of the mountains. The trek took three hours and was very hard on the return leg, i was down to my singlet, yet still breathing steam like i was smoking a cigarette (the humidity maybe?). Arrived back at the hotel around 12, had lunch and a much needed rest. Went out in the afternoon in search of a bank and we both bought a The North Face rainjacket (fake of course but really good quality), the initial price was 1.4million VND for both ( 70AUD), we go ti down to 950 000VND (49.50AUD). It was so hard to find an internet cafe, the hotel has computer but they were always occupied and had a 30min time limit. The cafe was full of little boys playing games, it was 0.25AUD per hour!!! However we could not get onto facebook there (and therefore this blog). I'm currently using the hotel computer.
Tomorrow will consist of a 12km trek to different villages and areas of Sapa. We depart tomorrow night for Hanoi.
p.s the Viet staff here have the soccer on and are going nuts.
p.s.s not that many Aussies here, lots of varying Europeans, the French would be the dominant tourist group.
No comments:
Post a Comment